Neighborhood effects in aging and aphasia

Abstract

Word-retrieval difficulty becomes increasingly common with age, and is virtually always compromised in aphasia. In addition to these individual factors, characteristics of the word, e.g. length, frequency, and phonological neighborhood density, also influence the likelihood of word retrieval success. We assessed how these factors influenced naming and lexical decision tasks. Younger and older non-brain-damaged participants were tested, as well as individuals with aphasia. Lexical frequency was found to influence responses most strongly, although there were differences across tasks and participant groups. Results are discussed with reference to stages of lexical retrieval, and how these are affected by aging and aphasia.